She chuckled because she was too tired to laugh. "I couldn't go once more even if my life depended on it. I'm completely wrung out."
His hand stilled on her back. "In a good way?"
"In the best way." She lifted her head and kissed him on the lips. "You don't need to fish for compliments. This was the most mind-blowing experience of my life. Nothing compares."
He grinned, his white teeth gleaming beneath his dark red mustache. "Tell me more."
She laughed this time. "You're such a male."
"Is it a bad thing?"
"No. It's just proof that you are flesh and blood and not a mythological sex god."
"Stop!" He put a hand over his chest, clutching it. "If my ego inflates any further, it will burst out of my chest. You don't want to be responsible for my demise, do you?"
That was more like the Esag she remembered from five thousand years ago, always ready with a joke, always irreverent and teasing.
"Fates forbid." She kissed his hand over his chest. "But I need to talk about this. I'd heard about the aphrodisiac effect ofthe venom bite. The ladies in the harem talked about their experiences with Mortdh sometimes, and I was surprised to hear that they remembered sex with him so fondly."
He grimaced. "I thought that Mortdh was a monster."
"So did I, especially after hearing the way Annani and Gulan talked about him. And maybe he was, but he'd treated his harem ladies well. They were pampered, and he gave them pleasure. When Navuh took over, he ignored them because Areana was his truelove mate. They didn't hold any appeal for him."
"Were they upset about it?" Esag asked.
"They were at the beginning when they thought he would get rid of them or doom them to a life of celibacy. Then he came up with the brilliant plan of keeping them on and breeding them with humans who looked like him so he could claim their sons as his own. The downside was that their sons were taken away from them in infancy. They could live with it. I couldn't." She sighed. "But I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about the venom bite. I thought they were exaggerating, but now I think that they were understating it." She laughed, the sound coming out a little breathless. "Fates, Esag. I had no idea. I couldn't have imagined."
"But you've experienced a venom bite. Otherwise, you couldn't transition."
She waved a dismissive hand. "He was just a boy who was a couple of years older than me and more scared of biting me than I was of being bitten. I was surprised that the tiny amount of venom he produced was enough to induce my transition. I felt a little woozy and saw some pretty colors, but that was the extentof it. Perhaps the tiny amount was enough because he was close to the source. His grandmother was a goddess."
Esag's hand stilled on her back. "What was his name?"
Tula frowned. "I don't remember. I only remember that my parents made a big deal about securing a direct descendant for my ceremony."
"I'm sorry that your first venom experience was so underwhelming."
She let out a breath. "I'm glad that it wasn't memorable. Otherwise, I would have spent five thousand years mourning what I had lost. I don't think I could have survived."
He chuckled. "Was my bite that good?"
"It was literally out of this world." Tula closed her eyes, letting the memories wash over her. They were still vivid, still sharp, as if they'd been etched into her mind. "I was flying, but not like in a dream, where everything is fuzzy, and you can't quite control where you're going. This was incredibly real. I could feel the wind on my face, see the landscape spreading out below me in colors I've never seen before. Colors that don't exist in the material world. The sky was many shades of purple I've never seen entwined with gold and turquoise and other colors I don't even have names for, swirling together like paint in water. The ground below was covered in crystalline structures that caught the light and scattered it into rainbows. And there were people waving at me, but they were translucent, like they were made of pure energy. Have any of your partners experienced anything similar?"
He nodded. "They all reported pretty much the same thing with some variations, but I couldn't let them remember theexperience and had to thrall the memory away. I always felt like a thief, robbing them of something wonderful, but I just couldn't risk it."
The harem ladies had spoken of similar experiences. Tula just wanted to make sure that what she’d seen was real, or her own mind’s creation, and not what she’dexpected to see.
"The strangest part wasn't the landscape or the translucent people. It was the feeling. This overwhelming sense of peace and love, like being wrapped in a warm blanket made of pure light. I've never felt anything like it."
"That sounds amazing." He kissed her forehead. "I wish I could claim credit for making you feel that way, but it was just the chemicals in the venom that influence your mind to produce certain visions."
"I don't know if that's true…" She hesitated. "It's kind of like a near-death experience. People who come back from the brink of death speak of this overwhelming sensation of peace and love and some even claim that they've seen God. Most scientists say it's just chemicals that the brain produces to provide comfort to the dying, but that doesn't make sense to me. Why would nature care about what people feel when they are dying? Nature is about survival, right?"
"I guess."
"Doing something nice for the dying is not beneficial for survival, which means that it is not the correct explanation. Nature is not merciful. I believe that the venom further widens the constricting funnel of our brains, allowing us a peek into the afterlife, so we can see what those who cross the veil see. It's a glimpse of what's waiting for us on the other side."
"Please don't talk about dying." Esag pulled her closer, his arms tightening around her. "It terrifies me."
